19. Corey
— ? —
Corey
Five weeks after the check night, Glenn comes to visit.
He’s been by regularly, every few days at least, to check on Willow and, I suspect, to make sure I’m not screwing up the fragile progress we’ve made.
We’ve reached a détente, he and I. Not friendship exactly, but a mutual respect born from shared purpose.
We both love her. That gives us enough common ground to build on.
But today, Glenn looks terrible.
Not the ordinary exhaustion of grief, but worse than that, broken. He shows up at the door with hollow eyes and clothes that look like he slept in them, and when I let him in, he just stands in the foyer like he’s forgotten how to move.
“Glenn? You okay?”
“Not really.” His voice is flat. Empty. “But I came to see Willow, so…”
“She’s resting. Doctor’s orders, afternoon naps are mandatory now.” I hesitate. “You want some coffee while you wait?”
He blinks at me like I’ve spoken in a foreign language. Then, slowly, he nods.
I lead him to the kitchen, pour two cups of coffee, set one in front of him. He stares at it like he’s forgotten what it’s for.
“Bad day?” I ask.
“Bad month. Bad three months.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Three months on Sunday since John died. I’ve counted every single day.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Everyone’s sorry. Everyone has been very sorry for three months.
” He picks up the coffee cup, puts it down again.
“And the worst part, the absolute worst part, is that I can’t even mourn him out loud.
I can’t post about him on social media. I can’t mention him at work.
I can’t explain to anyone why I’ve been a complete wreck, because nobody knew he existed.
Because I was too scared to let anyone know. ”
“Willow knew.”
“Willow’s the only one. And she’s got her own disaster to deal with. I can’t keep dumping my grief on her when she’s barely holding herself together.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “God, I’m a mess. I shouldn’t have come. I should just go home and…”
“Stay.”
The word surprises us both. Glenn looks at me with open bewilderment.
“You helped Willow when she needed it most,” I say, moving to the cabinet, pulling out something stronger than coffee. “You’ve been there for her through all of this. The least I can do is return the favor.”
“You don’t even like me.”
“I don’t know you.” I pour two glasses of whiskey, slide one across the counter.
“I spent years being jealous of you without ever bothering to actually know who you are. That’s on me.
But I’m trying to be different now. And part of being different is showing up for the people my wife cares about, even when it’s awkward as hell. ”
Glenn studies me for a beat. Then, slowly, he picks up the glass.
“This is weird,” he says. “You know that, right? Getting drunk with the guy you accused your wife of sleeping with?”
“Believe me, I’m aware.”
The ghost of a smile crosses his face. He raises his glass.
“To awkward new beginnings, then.”
I raise mine. “To awkward new beginnings.”
We drink.
The conversation starts slowly, stilted and careful, two men who don’t quite know how to talk to each other. But the whiskey helps, and the hour grows late, and eventually the barriers start coming down.
Glenn tells me about John. Not the facts I already know, the marriage, the illness, the death, but the real stories.
The human ones. How they met at a conference and spent the whole weekend talking instead of attending sessions.
How John proposed with a ring made of twist-ties because he couldn’t afford a real one yet, and Glenn said yes so fast he nearly choked on his coffee.
How the last thing John said, the morning of the day he died, was “I’m going to dream about Tuscany tonight. ”
“He always wanted to go to Tuscany,” Glenn says, his voice thick. “We kept putting it off. Next year, we’d say. When work calms down. When we have more time.” He laughs bitterly. “Turns out we didn’t have more time. We had eight years, and we wasted so much of it on things that didn’t matter.”
“That’s the cruel thing about time,” I say quietly. “You never know how much you have until it’s gone.”
“And now I’m supposed to just, what? Move on?
Find a new normal? Act like my whole world didn’t end three months ago?
” He shakes his head. “Everyone keeps telling me it gets easier. That the grief fades. But it doesn’t feel like fading.
It feels like drowning. Like I’m underwater and everyone else is on the surface, and they can see me struggling but they can’t reach me. ”
“That’s what it felt like when Willow left,” I admit. “Like drowning. Like the world kept moving and I was stuck in place, unable to breathe.”
Glenn looks at me, openly surprised. “I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“I didn’t think I would either. But grief is grief, I guess. Loss is loss. Whether it’s death or divorce or just the slow erosion of trust, the drowning feels the same.”
We drink in silence for a while.
“Can I ask you something?” Glenn’s words are starting to slur slightly. “Why were you so jealous of me? Before you knew about John, I mean. What was it about me specifically that made you so certain I was a threat?”
I consider the question, turning it over.
“You’re everything I’m not,” I say finally. “Charming. Comfortable with people. Born into the world I had to claw my way into. When you walk into a room, you belong there. When I walk into a room, I’m always calculating, who’s judging me, who’s about to figure out I’m a fraud.”
“You’re not a fraud.”
“Aren’t I?” I take another drink. “I built an entire identity out of pretending to be someone I’m not.
Confident. Successful. Worthy of a woman like Willow.
But underneath all that, I’m still the kid who slept in cars and wore secondhand clothes and knew, knew with absolute certainty, that no one would ever love him for who he really was. ”
“John used to say something about that.” Glenn’s voice is soft.
“About how we all think everyone else has it figured out, when really we’re all just making it up as we go along.
He said I always seemed so confident, so comfortable in my own skin.
But inside, I was constantly terrified that someone would realize I didn’t deserve any of it, the foundation, the money, the perfect life. ”
“And did he? Realize you didn’t deserve it?”
“He told me I deserved everything. Every single day, he told me.” Glenn’s eyes fill with tears. “And I believed him. That’s the crazy part. When he said it, I actually believed him. And now he’s gone, and the voice in my head that told me I was enough, it’s gone too.”
“Can I ask you one now?” I turn my glass in my hand. “That day in the lobby. You told your whole staff about John, about being married, after eight years of hiding it. I never asked what it cost you.”
Glenn is quiet for a moment. “Some of it went exactly the way I always feared. Two of the big donors stopped taking my calls. A board member sent me a very careful email about optics.” He shrugs.
“And then the part I never saw coming. Most of the people I was so sure would look at me differently just didn’t.
One of my grant officers told me she’d wondered for years why I never mentioned anyone.
The new donors coming in don’t seem to care at all. ”
“So it cost you.”
“It cost me the ones who were always going to leave eventually.” He drains his glass. “I spent eight years terrified of losing people who were never really mine. John kept trying to tell me that. Turns out it took getting outed in a lobby by a jealous idiot to make me finally hear it.”
“Happy to help,” I say, and something that isn’t quite a smile crosses his face.
We sit with that for a moment. Two men, both convinced we’re unworthy, both grieving in our own ways.
“I should go,” Glenn says eventually. “I’ve taken up enough of your evening.”
“Stay.” The word comes more easily this time. “You’ve had too much to drink to drive, and I don’t want to explain to Willow why I let you get behind the wheel. The guest room’s made up.”
He studies me for a beat. “You’re different from what I expected.”
“Better or worse?”
“Just different.” He stands, sways slightly. “I think maybe I misjudged you. Not about the stalking, that was seriously messed up, but about who you are underneath it. I think maybe you’re actually a decent person who did an incredibly terrible thing out of fear.”
“That might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in months.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.” He starts toward the stairs, then pauses. “Corey?”
“Yeah?”
“She wears your ring on a chain. Under her shirt, against her skin. Every single day since she moved back in.” His voice is quiet, almost reverent. “I don’t think she knows I’ve noticed, but I have. She never takes it off.”
The words hit me like a punch to the chest. My ring. The thin gold band I bought when I had nothing. The one she refused to let me upgrade because she said this ring was the promise.
She’s still wearing it. Against her heart.
“Don’t make me regret telling you that,” Glenn adds. “And for God’s sake, don’t mention that I said anything. She’ll murder us both.”
He disappears up the stairs before I can respond.
I sit alone in the kitchen for a long time after that, the whiskey warming my chest, thinking about chains and rings and second chances until the sun starts to lighten the sky outside the window.